


The Girl in 206

by Draco_sollicitus



Series: Short but Sometimes Sweet: Damerey Collection [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben is not nice in this, Controlling Ben Solo, F/M, Lawyer Ben Solo, Lawyer Rey, Modern AU, Neighbors AU, Poe is smitten, Poe knows how to cook, Protective Poe, Rey is terrible at cooking, Veteran Poe, references to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 02:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14463513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: When someone finally moves into Apartment 206, Poe Dameron of 106 has no idea what to expect.He certainly didn't expect Rey Kenobi, a human tornado of disaster, to almost burn down the apartment complex while making her dinner at 1 a.m. He also didn't expect Rey Kenobi, the beautiful and mysterious human tornado, to be so darn...Nice? Sweet? Perfect?When she starts knocking on his door for cooking tips, he has to face the growing realization that if Rey's a disaster, he must be a catastrophe because he has no idea what to do with the knowledge that he's more than a little bit in love with her.





	The Girl in 206

**Author's Note:**

> Taken from a tumblr prompt about being neighbors with someone who's good at cooking and you're miserable at cooking so hi, let's be friends. (Took it in a slightly different direction, but hopefully it works)
> 
> Some brief warnings for cursing, and Ben's controlling/borderline (maybe not so borderline) abusive behavior. Read below for explanation if you need to:
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> (Poe overhears a conversation between Ben and Rey that isn't great, and he steps in and things almost get violent; references to key dialogue from TLJ about her being 'nothing', Ben also grabs Rey physically)

Poe Dameron gets a new upstairs neighbor on an innocuous May afternoon. She slips past his door at 3:30 as he’s walking into his own apartment, 106. Poe looks up, fidgeting with his keys, and sees a slender woman jogging up the stairs with two duffel bags slung over her shoulder.

“Hey Bea,” he greets his lazy calico, who stretches on the small living room rug. The orange and white cat pads over and rubs up against his legs in greeting. “Hey buddy. Guess what, someone finally moved in upstairs.” As if to emphasize the point, there’s a muffled _bang_ – the woman must have dropped something while moving. A half hour later, he hasn’t heard anyone else walk by the door, so he figures that she must have had the movers come by while he was out.

“That musta been loud, huh, girl?” He croons at Bea, who purrs loudly at the attention and extends her small chin for scritches.

He sees the new tenant a few times over the next few weeks – unavoidable really, as he’s across from the complex’s mailboxes and storage rooms. It’s an old building, with a buzzer and an atrium with a linoleum floor that’s been painted, badly, to look like marble. Still, it’s in a nice neighborhood, rent isn’t terrible, and Poe likes that their particular complex is situated on a large plot of land, a few hundred feet away from the road. There’s covered parking, and trees that ring the complex’s grounds block out a lot of noise, and he’s within walking distance of his therapist.

Poe likes his building; and he’s more than okay with the fact that he doesn’t know any of his neighbors. He doesn’t really do well with people, anymore.

***

Poe really does like his building, and he’d really rather it not burn down. So when the fire alarm goes off at 1:00 a.m. in late May, he has a brief moment of panic, forgetting where he is – Is the base under attack? Is there nearby bombing? Does he need to report to stations? Where the hell is his unit? – but then Bea jumps up in his lap, meowing anxiously, and he shakes his head, throws on his leather jacket, shoves his feet into slippers, and heads outside with his cat calmly sitting in his arms.

Bea handles stressful situations a lot better than he does, Poe thinks, his hands shaking as he locks up his apartment.

Other tenants are leaving the complex in varying states of undress – Poe’s so glad he wore pajama bottoms and a t-shirt to bed last night – and he nods at Finn Trooper, the cheerful man from 310. His arm’s around his tiny girlfriend, and Finn nods back, looking half-awake as he heads outside.

Poe finds himself scanning the faces of his neighbors, and he’s amused that he only knows Finn’s name (they got their mail messed up, once, and Poe had thought Finn was really, really cute until he learned that Finn had a long-term girlfriend) out of the hundred or so people standing outside.

Finn’s resting his chin on his girlfriend’s head, looking like he’s about to fall asleep, so Poe bounces on his heels and holds Bea closer to his chest as the fire engines wail down the street. Poe can’t help the grumble of irritation in his throat; now that he’s outside, he can see a distinct lack of smoke and flames from the building, which means someone had probably just been cooking something and burnt it, and the smoke got under the door and triggered the fire alarm, and _God,_ some people are so –

“Sorry,” a soft voice comes from next to him. Poe turns to see the woman who’d moved in earlier this month looking sheepish. “I’m so sorry.” Her accent is vaguely British, and she’s…yeah, she’s pretty. Really pretty. He’d only caught a glimpse of her before, but now she’s standing in front of him under the starlight and the faux-lights of the complex’s lampposts, and Poe clears his throat, Bea purring loudly before he can physically respond.

“What for?” His voice is lower, scratchier than normal, but from sleep or interest, he can’t tell.

The woman looks close to crying, and she rubs her hands together. He sees that she’s thin, not necessarily unhealthy, but there’s something about her face that looks – lost. Poe thinks he knows that look fairly well by now. “I got home really late from work, and I needed to eat, but I’m not very good at cooking so…” She gestures her hand at the building, where the firemen walking up the stairs towards the second floor, and Poe pieces it together. The pretty girl from 206 set off the fire alarm.

“Oh.” Poe nods, hoping that he doesn’t look cross with her (he is, though, honestly, but she looks upset, and he may be a lot different than he was years ago before the injury and the PTSD and all the dead friends, but he’s not an asshole). “Oh, I see. What were you trying to cook?” _Please don’t say bacon._

“Bacon,” the woman admits, folding her slender arms over her chest. Her t-shirt is from Harvard Law, and Poe raises his eyebrows at that, but doesn’t ask.

“Did you turn the exhaust fan on?” He asks, staring at her.

“The what now?” She asks politely. “I’m Rey, by the way.” She holds her hand out, and then sees that he’s holding Bea with his right hand, so she holds out her left instead.

Poe takes it, smiling even though he really is exhausted. “Poe. Poe Dameron,” he says, shaking her hand. “And this is Bea.”

“Hello, Bea,” Rey says to the cat. “And hello, Mr. Dameron.” Yeah, it’s 1:00 a.m. and he just woke up from a randomly pleasant dream, so he can be forgiven for how his gut clenches at her saying his name, right? Right? This is a normal human reaction. Not weird at all.

“If you want to avoid a mess and another accident, you can always cook bacon in the oven,” Poe tells her once they’ve released the handshake (and he’s not focusing on how soft her palm was, how oddly it matched with the callouses on her fingertips, how he’d like to find out why those callouses exist, how those callouses would feel on different parts of his – yeah, no, get it together, Mr. Dameron).

“Really?” Rey asks, eyes wide. “Like, just on the rack?”

“No.” Poe raises his eyebrows at the question. “That would almost definitely cause a fire. You put it on a pan on top of aluminum foil. Oven at 400, 10 or 15 minutes, you’ll be good to go.”

“You just knew that? Off the top of your head?” Rey asks. She’s a curious person, and he finds that he likes answering her questions. Huh. He’ll have to mention that to his therapist. _Maintained a conversation with a stranger, didn’t feel anxious, mostly felt useful._

“Uh, yeah,” Poe says. Is it weird that he knows that? He doesn’t even really eat that much bacon.

“Are you a cook?” She asks, another question.

This is all very weird, her interest in him, and his happiness in replying: Poe’s talked to plenty of pretty people – and this girl is one of the prettier people he’s ever met –he’s charmed a lot of pretty people, too. Conversations are transactional, clearly headed towards the bedroom or a date, or something else pleasant. Conversations are had with pretty people to clear the air and get to the main event.

But Rey talks to him, and he thinks she might be…actually interested in what he has to say. He isn’t sure he knows what to do with it.

“In a sense,” he shrugs. _I took a lot of classes as part of my therapy when I came back to civilian life,_ his brain mutters. Thankfully it doesn’t trip out of his mouth, even in this weird post-midnight liminal space they’re occupying.

A fireman stomps up to them, then, asking “206?” and frowns at Rey, who smiles at him shyly.

“Thank you, sir,” she says, voice low and sweet. Rey looks so sad, so chagrined, that even Poe feels slightly suckerpunched.

The guy blinks, twice, and then hands her a pamphlet on fire safety. “At least we know the batteries in your smoke detector work,” he says, winking.

_What?_

“I guess,” Rey shrugs. “The super put them in, I’ll be sure to let him know. Is there like, a fine I have to pay?” Poe tries very hard not to notice how her spine stiffens at the same time she also seems to shrink inward.

“No, no,” the fireman laughs. “We’ll let this one slide, it was an honest mistake, clearly. Just, be more careful, please. Now, you and your boyfriend get inside, miss, it’s a little cold.”

_Whaaaaaaat?_

Mr. Friendly Fireman scowls at Poe, then. “Could have lent her your jacket, dude.” He brushes past Poe on his way back to the truck.

“She’s not my –” Poe splutters.

“Thank you again!” Rey hollers before shoving Poe playfully. “Don’t look so insulted, Mr. Dameron. Many people would tell you I’m a catch, and that’s even after tasting my cooking.” Poe’s still burning from – not embarrassment, more shock that someone would look at this beautiful, funny, attractive woman and think for a second she’d go for him – and Rey smiles at him, sweetly, hefting her keys in her hand. “And thanks for the tip. Come on up to 206 whenever you want to try some not-incinerated cooking.” She winks at him, and his face burns brighter, and Rey’s disappeared back into the building before he can remember how to do talking.

Do talking.

God.

***

Rey shows up at his door a week later. She’s been waving to him when they pass in the front hall of the complex, and then she’ll jog up the stairs to the second floor – 206, he remembers, and he also remembers she told him to come over, whenever (and God, it takes all his self-restraint sometimes not to drag himself up the stairs some nights when he wakes up from a nightmare and can hear her pattering around her apartment above him, if only because her smile is the brightest thing he’s seen in months, like sunshine itself).

“Hi!” She chirps when he opens the door.

“Hello,” Poe returns, smiling at her but also staring at her appearance. Rey’s red-faced and slightly sweating, and she’s wearing a red oven mitt and holding a pan with a hunk of steaming meat on it.

“Does this look done to you?” Rey asks, staring down at the pork like it had insulted her personally.

“Well,” Poe begins awkwardly, not sure how to say this without insulting her. “It’s pork, Rey. You can’t really eyeball pork…”

“Huh,” Rey wrinkles her nose and looks back at the pan, and Poe surreptitiously twists an arm behind him to pinch his lower back. Is this some sort of weird dream where the beautiful, ridiculous upstairs neighbor he might have a tiny, ridiculous crush on shows up at his door with roast pork? That’s gotta be more sensible than this happening in real life.  He even looks down to make sure he’s wearing pants (he is, but he realizes they’re the same pants he wore yesterday. Not that Rey saw him yesterday, but still. He’s a mess). “So, how do you tell if it’s done?”

“You can cut it a little and see what color the juices are,” Poe offers, and Rey’s face doesn’t look any more optimistic, so he continues. “You can also cut it down the middle and see what color the meat is – it should be closer to a white color if it’s done, but then you run the risk of drying out the cut if you have to put it back. Best bet is to use a thermometer typically, make sure it gets up to 145 degrees in the middle of the piece, and then let it rest for a few minutes before trying to eat it.”

“Let it rest?” Rey asks, hand on her hip. “Like, let it sit in the oven some more?”

Poe stares at her, blankly. “No, I mean like, take it out and put it on a hard, clean surface to cool before you cut it.”

“Huh,” Rey nods, considering this information. “So, you’re sure I can jab a thermometer in this?”

“Yes?” Poe answers, his answer sounding more like a question.

“But it’s been in my _ear,_ ” Rey says, disbelief coloring her voice.

“The pork?” Poe squawks. _What?_

“No, silly, the thermometer.” Rey’s expression grows ever more quizzical, and then Poe starts to laugh. “What?” Rey snaps, defensively. Poe waves a hand at her, leaning over with laughter. He hasn’t laughed like this since before his last tour, he hasn’t laughed like this in _years._ Rey scowls at him, and he feels bad about that because he isn’t laughing at her – ok, maybe technically, but it isn’t mean – he’s laughing at this absurd situation, and how incidentally charming she is, and he’s laughing because he thought this sort of thing only happened on sitcoms. Rey snorts, too, unwillingly, and then she bites her lip and raises her eyebrow as if to say, _Explain yourself, asshole._

“Sorry, sorry,” Poe pants before standing upright. “No, Sunshine, you need to get a meat thermometer, it’s a special metal one that you can use to test internal temps of what you’re cooking.”

He’s still laughing when Rey cocks her head and fixes him with an evil look. “Sunshine?” She asks, smirking.

Now the laughter’s done. Poe feels his ears burn – he wonders if they’re more of a crimson or a cerise now – and then he coughs and holds the door open wider before walking quickly into his kitchen. “I have an extra thermometer you can borrow!” He shouts, ignoring the fact that he may or may not have just exposed his sorta-tiny crush on his neighbor _to_ said neighbor.

He smiles at her despite his embarrassment when he hands her the thermometer a minute later, and she jabs it unceremoniously into the pork.

“It uh,” Poe nudges her foot with his own, and he’s amused to realize that she isn’t wearing shoes. “It works better if you test it right after it comes out of the oven.”

“Oh, shit.” Rey says dispassionately, grimacing at her pan. “Well, thank you for your help, Mr. Dameron.” Rey flutters her eyelashes at him, and that’s going to haunt him for the rest of the night. Before he can think of a response, she’s walking back up the stairs. A few seconds later, he can hear her thumping around her apartment. Poe smiles to himself and closes his door.

He settles into his armchair, and Bea hops up with him. Poe starts laughing in earnest again, ten minutes later, when he hears the individual fire alarm in Rey’s apartment go off. It cuts off eight seconds after it starts – he’d heard footsteps running in those seconds – and then there’s a banging on his ceiling with a muffled, “Sorry!”

Half an hour later, there’s another knock on his door. He’d been dozing in his chair, exhausted from his theapy session this morning, and he stretches and goes to answer it.

Rey’s standing there, again, wearing shoes this time. She’s wearing a different outfit, too – it had been a sweatshirt and jeans earlier, and now she’s wearing a pretty dress – and he wonders if she spilled something on her first outfit to inspire the change. Rey _is_ holding a large pizza, and she’s smiling at him hopefully.

“It’s pepperoni. Wanna share?” She asks, holding the box out. Poe grins and nods, holding the door open for her, and she skips into the apartment. “Where should we sit?” Rey asks, clearly noticing his lack of a dinner table.

“Couch is fine,” Poe says, wincing. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Do you have any coffee?” Rey asks, hopefully, peering into his kitchen and spotting his coffeemaker with bright eyes.

 _Crap._ “That thing’s broken, regretfully,” Poe says. “Sorry, I keep meaning to get it fixed but then I forget. Anything else?”

“You should let me at it, I’m good at fixing things. You have to be when you’re good at breaking them.” Poe snorts at that. “But, water’s good,” Rey chirps, settling herself on the couch and holding her hand out to Bea, who’s wandered out from her hiding space.

“Are you just here to see my cat?” Poe asks, accusingly, walking over to his beat-up couch with two glasses of water.

“Yep,” Rey says, clearly unbothered. “That and my apartment smells like burnt meat.”

“Mmm, I’d feel more insulted if you hadn’t brought me pizza.” Poe moves to settle down on the floor across the coffee table, but Rey makes an aggrieved noise.

“Nuh-uh, come sit next to me and Bea!” She insists, patting the cushions. “Don’t let me run you off from your own couch.”

Poe obliges, and he’s secretly glad she offered – he isn’t sure his knee would be happy with him in the morning if he ate cross-legged on the floor.

They demolish the pizza quickly, and Poe digs out a pint of Ben & Jerry’s from the freezer, and the rest of the evening is spent arguing over the best flavors of everything.

Poe knows he has a more-than-crush on his upstairs neighbors, but it doesn’t stop the disgust in his voice when he asks, “ _Pineapple?_ You actually like _pineapple_ on your pizza? God, you think you know a person.”

Rey laughs, though, a distractingly beautiful noise, and Poe sneaks a glance at her out of the corner of his eye.

His neighbor doesn’t catch him staring, but Bea sure as hell does.

Judgmental cat.

***

Rey asks him a thousand and one questions about cooking – and laundry, and even _sports_ once, when she came over and he was watching Madrid play – over the next month. They weirdly don’t exchange phone numbers, and Poe’s secretly glad about that. If she texted him her questions, he’d still answer them, but Rey’s the only person he consistently talks to besides his dad. He treasures her odd questions, and he treasures the moments he opens his door to find her standing there, lip between her teeth and some mild fiasco brewing upstairs in her apartment.

He goes upstairs once, when he hears an almighty crash. Rey opens the door, sweating and wincing – she’d fallen off the counter, apparently, trying to reach something on top of her fridge (“How it even got up there, I don’t even know!”).

Poe makes her sit down so he can look at her arm from elbow to wrist, which is luckily just bruised, although intensely so. “You’re going to need to ice this,” he says softly, running his fingertips around the already swollen skin.

Rey shivers, and he pulls his hand away. “Sorry,” Poe mutters. He’d forgotten himself; he shouldn’t touch her when she’s in pain. “I know it hurts, I’m sorry.” He helps her put together an icepack using a ziplock bag and a towel, and he looks around her apartment.

He realizes, then, why he hadn’t seen movers the day she’d arrived. Rey doesn’t have any furniture, really. There’s a desk and a rolling chair, with stacks of serious looking books surrounding it; and he can see a mattress over in the bedroom. Rey doesn’t have furniture; but, she does have a ridiculous amount of plants.

Her windows are thrown open and sunlight streams into the living room, catching on rows and rows of potted plants.

“I like plants,” Rey mutters, softly. “I know, it’s weird.”

“It’s not.” Poe turns from his examination to shake his head at her. “It’s wonderful.” He definitely does not imagine the blush on Rey’s face; he definitely does not imagine the blush on his own face, either.

***

“I told you before, Ben, I can’t – I can’t do this anymore.”

He can hear the soft, lilting voice of his upstairs neighbor through his door. She must be on her phone, pacing. He often does the same thing, so he shrugs and goes back to his crossword puzzle, wincing as he extends his knee to get up on the bar stool at his kitchen island.

“No – No, Ben, stay down there, please.”

There’s a rumble of a male voice, and Poe stiffens. Rey isn’t on the phone at all – whoever this Ben is, he’s in the complex, and she very much does not want him to be.

The voice becomes clear as Poe slides down off his seat and limps toward the door (he really should start wearing his brace again). “Nobody knows me like you do, Rey, please, don’t shut me out. I can change, I can.”

“You shouldn’t have to.” She sounds five seconds away from crying, and Poe almost grabs his baseball bat from the corner when he gets to the front entry. “And I shouldn’t have to keep being hurt by you, over and over again, hoping that you’re going to change when clearly you like being – Kylo? Or whatever it is the fuck it is you’re calling yourself these days.”

“I can’t let you go. I won’t.” In any other context, the words would be romantic, but with Ben’s voice suddenly as loud as hers, really louder, Poe knows them for what they are. A threat.

He throws the door open and pretends to blink in surprise. “Hey there, Sunshine!” Immediately, his eyes train on the man who’s been threatening Rey from 206. He’s easily six foot five, with more than a hundred pounds on the woman in front of Poe’s door. “You okay?”

“Yes, Mr. Dameron, I’m fine.” Rey scowls at the massive man looming over her. Poe has a hunch that she could kick this guy’s ass, and his ass, six ways to Sunday (maybe even at the same time, and ain’t that a picture), but there’s something very not right about a large man using his physical presence to intimidate a smaller woman, especially a woman who appears to be an ex-something.

“Of course she’s fine,” the other man sneers. His face smooths into some sort of terrifying politeness, and Poe can’t deny that he’s incredibly attractive, in an odd way. Compellingly attractive, even. “I’m Ben, by the way,” he says, in a charming voice that probably works on a lot of people, trashcan lid of a hand extended towards Poe.

“Yeah, and I don’t give a fuck,” Poe says coldly. Ben looks taken aback, like this is an anomalous response to him. “Hey Sunshine, my coffee machine is still broken, do you think you could come in and fix it?” Poe asks, tactlessly.

His apartment’s a mess, he remembers suddenly. Ah, fuck it. This is for her physical safety, after all, maybe she won’t judge him too bad when she sees what a wreck he is today.

“Yeah, sure,” Rey smiles at him.

“We weren’t done,” Ben snaps, reaching out to grab her arm, and then Poe fucking loses it.

“Don’t touch her,” he says, voice sharper than a dagger, stalking out of his apartment and shoving this giant mountain of a man away from the sweet-faced girl from upstairs. Sure, she sets shit on fire at weird times in the middle of the night, and sure, he isn’t sure how a woman who weighs a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet can stomp _that_ loudly, but Rey from 206 is the most perfect person who’s ever fucking lived, he’s pretty sure. Ben-whoever-the-fuck-this-is doesn’t get touch her like that. Ever.

Poe stands between Ben and Rey, and he looks over his shoulder at her. For all her bravado the rest of the time, she looks suddenly scared and unsure of herself – Poe realizes with a twisting feeling in his stomach, that this might not be the first time this guy’s tried to intimidate her – or do anything worse. “Go on inside, Rey,” Poe says gently. She nods and once she’s in, the door closes.

Poe turns back to Ben, fuming. “Get out,” he says coldly. This guy could definitely just pick Poe up and put him somewhere else (he’s going to get a crick in his neck if he has to look up at him any longer), but Poe has good old-fashioned righteous fury on his side. “Get the fuck out of this building, and don’t come back.”

“So, you’re the new boyfriend?” Ben sneers. Poe doesn’t know what his face says, but clearly he’s an open book for how well Ben reads him. “Ah, not the boyfriend, then. The wannabe boyfriend. Hm. Well, I’ll stay away, but it’s no guarantee she won’t come back to me. I know her better than anyone else in this world.” Ben lifts his head away from the aggressive eye contact he’d been making with Poe, and raises his voice. “Ain’t that right, sweetheart?”

There’s no response, and Poe feels his hand curling into a fist. Looking at him closer, Poe has a realization: Ben may be large, but his hands are soft, and his jaw is soft, and his clothes and his general appearance tell Poe that this guy’s never been in a real fight. And Poe has. He was trained to kill, and he finds that for the first time, ever, he’s glad for that training.

“Go.” Poe says, with finality. Ben leaves, the door of the atrium slamming shut behind him, and Poe takes a deep breath to steady himself. He’d been shaking from the confrontation, and the rage that this guy scared Rey. He stands there for a minute or so, collecting himself, before walking into his apartment.

Rey’s standing there, Bea at her feet; the cat is rubbing her face into Rey’s jeans, over and over again, and when she sees Poe, Bea meows worriedly. He turns and locks the door behind him.

“You okay, Sunshine?” Poe asks hoarsely. Rey nods her head _yes,_ but halfway through, her expression crumbles slightly, and she shakes her head _no_ instead. “Would it help if I hugged you?” Poe really hopes the answer is yes because he kind of needs a hug, too.

Rey nods, hands wrapped around her middle, and Poe walks forward quickly until he’s close enough to wrap his arms around her. Rey’s trembling against him, so he holds her tighter, and his hand comes up to cradle the back of her head. “You’re okay,” he murmurs. “You’re safe, you’re okay, he’s gone.”

He holds her for a little while in the entrance to his apartment, and Rey eventually stops trembling. He guides her to the couch, and once she’s settled, Bea hops up to sit in her lap. Poe goes to get her a glass of water, and when he comes back, Rey smiles up at him nervously. “Sorry you had to see that.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Poe shakes his head and sits down next to her. Rey scoots in towards him, and Poe moves to meet her halfway. She takes the glass of water and drinks a little. “That guy, Rey, did he – “ _Hurt you,_ is the unspoken question.

“No,” Rey shakes her head. “No, no, not like that. Ben never raised a hand to me. Said some real shitty things a few times, but he never physically hurt me. I think I just reacted like that because when I was younger, someone else…” Rey trails off, but Poe knows what she’s trying to say. He slowly lifts his arm, and when she nods, he puts it over her shoulders.

“I’m guessing things didn’t end well between you two,” Poe asks, wincing at the accidental suggestion of simplicity. None of that looked simple.

“You could say that. But he wasn’t ever really my boyfriend, so I didn’t even think he cared about me that much.”

 _What just happened doesn’t mean he cares about you, that’s a bully trying to control you._ Poe saves her the lecture. He knows she doesn’t need it, and most definitely doesn’t want it. “Do you want to talk about it?” Poe asks, unsure of how to proceed.

“Sure,” Rey shrugs. “Like I said, it’s not really Ben that bothers me, it’s my own…stuff that happened when I was younger.” Again, Poe’s stomach aches at the implication. “Ben was an assistant professor when I was in law school,” Rey says, tips of her ears burning. “What we had it was very – intense.”

“Did he – did you agree to be in a relationship with him?” Poe asks, not wanting to hear the answer. That sort of power dynamic – it doesn’t play well.

“Yes,” Rey nods, thoughtfully, chewing her lip. “He didn’t try to pursue anything until I graduated, and we barely crossed paths while I was studying. He told me later he’d done it on purpose, not wanting to complicate my education.” Poe nods, satisfied slightly. “We were together – not really together, more like… _together_ , you know – for half a year. Anyway, he took a job at a corporate office, to make garbage amounts of money. And after I finished my first internship, I got my dream job.” She smiles, softly, at the cup of tea in front of her.

“Which is –” Poe prods, gently.

“I do pro-bono work,” Rey explains. “For family courts. Get women out of abusive relationships, work with kids who are aging out of the system. It’s incredible, and everything I ever wanted. But, Ben….” She trails off, looking sad.

“Doesn’t approve?”

“No,” Rey laughs, ruefully. “The opposite. I guess he was holding a spot for me at his corporation, or whatever, and he threw a fit when I took the pro-bono job. Accused me of being an underachiever, of settling for less than I was capable of.” She shrugs and fidgets with her hands in her lap. “I broke things off with him, and it’s stupid, he wasn’t even really my boyfriend, but it was the only…relationship? I’d ever had, so it hurt to end it, even though he was bad for me. Always said I was nothing, that I was going nowhere. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“You aren’t nothing,” Poe insists, reaching across his lap slowly so he can cover her hands with his free hand. “Rey, I‘m just getting to know you, and I can tell you – you aren’t nothing. What you do _does_ sound incredible, and so, so important. And it’s important to you – you shouldn’t listen to a thing that asshole says.”

“Thanks,” Rey smiles at him, and his breath catches in her throat. She just looks so damn right, sitting on a couch in his living room with the overhead lights shining on her hair, bringing out the hidden reds.

“Sorry,” Poe huffs a laugh and shakes the hair out of his eyes. “You don’t need some two-bit ex-pilot to tell you something you already know.”

“No,” Rey shakes her head and flips her hands so they’re palm to palm. Their fingers lace together naturally, and his heart tightens when she squeezes his hand. “No, it’s…it’s nice to hear from someone else.”

“I bet your parents are proud of you,” Poe says.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Rey mutters, and then she coughs. “Sorry. I just – I don’t mind, anymore, but, my parents left me outside a bus station when I was a year and a half old. They…I don’t think they would be proud of me, but frankly, I don’t need them. I’ve done just fine on my own.”

“More than fine,” Poe smiles at her even though inside he’s screaming in rage, just a little bit, like, a cool amount, you know? Because Poe Dameron, he’s cool, he’s cool and untraumatized and has absolutely zero darkness inside of him that’s screaming to take on the world for a girl he barely knows. Yeah.

He’s cool.

Rey finishes her glass of water, and then leans into him, almost unexpectedly. Poe finds himself curving around her subconsciously, his body obviously desperate to be as close as possible to her, to comfort her – and himself, to be honest – and when her head comes to rest on his collarbone, Poe puts his chin on top of her head and sighs, softly, at the strange and sudden intimacy of the moment.

They don’t talk for a few minutes, and Rey nestles in closer at one point, her knee sliding to rest on top of his thigh. Poe counts backwards from a hundred at first, trying to control his emotions, before giving up. Nothing he’s feeling right now is bad, honestly. He shouldn’t be afraid of this weird feeling in his stomach. After a beat, he realizes what the feeling is; he just hasn’t felt it in a while.

_Hope._

Rey clears her throat and shifts, and Poe reluctantly releases his hold. “You feeling better?” He asks, softly.

“Yeah, I think I just need to do something with my hands,” Rey laughs and stands up. “That’s what I did to distract myself a lot when I was younger, just keep busy. Oh! I know!” She walks over to his kitchen, straight to the coffeemaker. “I can finally fix this.”

“You don’t… have to fix that,” Poe says awkwardly, but Rey’s already poking around the ancient coffeemaker.

“No, no, I’d love to,” Rey enthuses. “For my knight in shining Under Armor.” Poe looks down at his sweatshirt and laughs. “Anyway, where’s your toolbox?”

“Uh.” Poe sits up on the couch so he can rest his elbow on the back of it, propping his chin in his hand so he can look at Rey fully and grin sheepishly. “I don’t have one.”

Rey looks delighted. “Mr. Fancy Chef Man who makes me feel bad for not knowing the difference between parchment paper and regular paper _doesn’t own a toolbox?_ ”

“Nope,” Poe admits, still smiling at her. “And in my defense, that’s a fairly important difference, there, if you don’t want to destroy your food. Or oven. Or apartment.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rey waves a hand at him. “I’m going to go upstairs and get my toolbox, and then I’ll be back down here in a jiffy to fix this pile of parts.”

“Did you just say jiffy?” Poe crows, but Rey’s already flouncing out his doors, her spirits much closer to normal than they were half an hour ago. Poe’s still smiling long after she’s gone, his hand gripping the ring on the necklace he never takes off, because yeah, he’s got it bad.

It wouldn’t be right, not today, to ask her out. But some day soon, Poe’s going to figure out how to ask Rey from 206 out on a date, and he’s going to be completely, totally normal about it, and he’ll figure out what to do with all this _hope_ in his stomach, all the good and bright things she brought back into his life. And then, they can work on their happy ending together.

But for today, he’ll content himself with watching Rey poke around his coffeemaker, pulling out increasingly elaborate tools – and she doesn’t own a sofa, but of course she owns a top of the line toolbox – while she resurrects a machine that’s been broken for two years. There’s a metaphor there, he knows, but he won’t look too closely at it.

Rey from 206 is hanging out with Poe from 106, and both of them are happy, or at least working on being happy, and that’s enough for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright alright alright
> 
> (Finished the last 4000 words of this this afternoon while taking a break from my Much Ado About Nothing AU that I intend on publishing when it's closer to being done)


End file.
